The Qin army invented new weapons to exploit their
advantage of their new wall. The most deadly of these was the
crossbow that could hurl an arrow 250 yards with amazing
accuracy. Other weapons included iron casting techniques to
produce double edged swords which would not be known in the west
for some 1,300 years later. The soft bronze swords of the enemy
were no match for the double-edged iron swords of the Qin
army.

All of this was achieved at great economic and
human costs. The emperor thought the wall would bring peace to
the nation but the nation was weakened by the heavy cost of the
construction. Ditches along the wall were filled with the corpses
of workers who died building the wall. Deaths of wall workers are
estimated to exceed one million. Some have claimed that the dead
workers were entombed in the wall itself. Later investigations
proved this untrue. Also decaying bodies would have weakened the
structure and would not have been allowed.

The Cost of The Great Wall

No society could sustain such a terrible burden.
Taxation became heavier and heavier. Some 3,500,000 people were
involved in the building of the Great Wall. That was 70% of the
total population of China at that time. For each worker working
on the wall, six were required to feed and support them.
Construction of the Qin wall became the most hated imperial
project in Chinese history.

In 209 BC, only a year after the death of the Qin
Emperor, millions of peasants rose up and ended the tyranny and
bloodshed of wall building. The Qin Dynasty had fallen, brought
down by the building of the great wall. Within ten years much of
the wall was a neglected ruin. Once again the northern border was
at the mercy of the northern invaders.